(Picture: Reuters)
Peter Mandelson went full Malcolm Tucker lashing out at the ministerial’incompetence’ over Donald Trump’s gift of a red despatch box.
The disgraced Lord described the shambolic process for securing a ministerial-style box coveted by the US President as like something from the BBC comedy The Thick of It in a series of emails released by the Government.
He said the ‘saga goes on’ in an email to the Prime Minister’s then chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, following protracted exchanges between high-ranking officials over the bespoke gift for last year’s UK state visit by the US
After the furore, Trump was presented with the red box, usually reserved for ministers, and embossed with the presidential seal and title by Sir Keir Starmer at Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country retreat, last September.
Downing Street said at the time that it ‘symbolises the special relationship between the UK and US’.
The extended behind-the-scenes negotiations about the gift were revealed in the latest haul of communications released by the Government relating to Sir Keir’s controversial decision to award the prestigious Washington job to Lord Mandelson.
Lord Mandelson was subsequently sacked over his friendship with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
The tranche of documents published included emails with the subject title ‘Trump Red Box’ and marked ‘official sensitive’, which indicated confusion continued over the status of the gift with just weeks to go before the president’s arrival.
In an email sent last August by the then Foreign Office chief Sir Olly Robbins, who was effectively sacked earlier this year over the Lord Mandelson debacle, he said the embassy in Washington was ‘clear that one of the gifts that would mean the most to the president would be a red dispatch box with the gold crest and lettering mimicking a UK Government ministerial box but with ‘President of the United States’ inscribed upon it’.
In a message sent the same day, the then deputy head of mission in Washington, James Roscoe, who abruptly left his job last month, wrote: ‘I do think we need to move with some urgency here…’
Separately, David Tinline, a Downing Street civil servant, wrote: ‘I would be grateful for any support/ideas on a way through this – including potentially more senior representation at that meeting to help push things forward.’
In a follow-up email, Mr Roscoe sought clarification over whether the firm which makes the despatch boxes, Barrow, Hepburn & Gale, had started on the gift.
He said: ‘It needs to be ready in two weeks to gift for the SV (state visit).’
He added: ‘And why have HMT (His Majesty’s Treasury) sat on this since February?’
A separate email from Mr Tinline also suggested Buckingham Palace were to be involved.
Amid the exchanges, Lord Mandelson wrote in an email to Mr McSweeney: ‘The saga goes on. See Olly email. This is like something out of Thick of it.’
In a subsequent message on the subject of the ‘Trump Red Box’, he said: ‘What the attachment says is that Whitehall has known about (redacted) since February and it was confirmed in early July and nobody had the wit to say anything. What incompetence.’
Elsewhere in the communications, Lord Mandelson was also uncomplimentary about Mr McSweeney and Downing Street staff when the Prime Minister attended a multilateral summit on Ukraine hosted by Mr Trump at the White House last August.
In WhatsApp messages with Cabinet minister Pat McFadden, Lord Mandelson said: ‘We have a whole lot of No10 keystone cops coming, including Morgan, falling over themselves and complaining they won’t all be in the Oval (none of us will be).’
The file dump also revealed Lord Mandelson said he had messaged Nigel Farage and was ‘trying to keep him nice without complete success’ in the days before he went to Washington to take up the post of British ambassador.
In a WhatsApp conversation from January 2025, Lord Mandelson and former No 10 adviser Matthew Doyle discussed a news story in which the Reform UK leader said he had spoken to senior members of the Government and offered to act as a go-between to ease relations with Mr Trump.
Asked by Mr Doyle if he recognized the claim, Lord Mandelson wrote: ‘He may mean me because we have exchanged messages eg last week he went on TV and tried to make a thing about me not coming to the inaugural and I explained that I had to go through all formalities before setting foot on US soil etc.
‘I am trying to keep him nice without complete success. I would advise against anything which sounds disobliging.’
In messages earlier the same day, the pair discussed news stories and social media posts suggesting that Mr Trump could reject Lord Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador.
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